Paris Hilton Savaged By Kinkajou

In what can only be termed as a massive exercise in bad taste, Paris Hilton's pet kinkajou attacked and bit her. The ferocious, yet harmless looking, beast decided he had had enough of her attentions and bit her on the arm. Yet another manifestation of the evil animal conspiracy. (Although we're inclined to root for the kinkajou in this case).  

LOS ANGELES - Paris Hilton got no love this week from her pet kinkajou Baby Luv — in fact, the raccoon-like animal bit her. The heiress was not badly hurt but did visit a hospital emergency room to receive a tetanus shot, her publicist, Elliot Mintz, told The Associated Press on Friday.

Hilton was frolicking with her exotic pet early Tuesday morning "the way some people play with their cats and dogs" when the animal became excited, Mintz said.

"Baby Luv bit her. It's a superficial bite on her left arm," he said.

Hilton, concerned that she was bleeding, called Mintz at 3 a.m., and he took her to the hospital.

"She was seen by a doctor, who treated the wound, gave her a tetanus shot, cleaned the wound and applied something to it," Mintz said.

Whereupon the publicist rushed to get the news out right away, faxing every reporter in his Rolodex. Baby Luv, meanwhile promptly expired from an allergic reaction attributed to plastic toxicity.

Ok, we made that last bit up. Maybe. It's early yet.

Burt Rutan And Spaceship Two

Burt Rutan gives an exclusive interview and a glimpse at a possible future for commercial suborbital spaceflight. That's what he sees as the necessary precursor to a truely viable commercial orbital system. The Spaceship Two design will only be able to give passengers about four minutes of zero gravity.

"First of all, just because people have kind of discovered 'Oh, now we can have a personal commercial spaceflight industry' … that doesn't mean we can just throw money at the problem and send people to resort hotels in orbit," Rutan told SPACE.com.

Rutan admitted that he's frustrated but committed to building suborbital spaceships.

"I'd love to be working on going to the Moon. I'm doing this really because I don't think I can convince a funder to go out and invest in an orbital system that we're not sure would work."

In Rutan's plotting of things to come, Tier 2 is orbital.

"My bottom line is that we have to have some kind of breakthroughs," Rutan explained. "What's needed is to create an environment to have breakthroughs … to try things that may seem illogical at first."

If you're interested in space, it's a good read.

Olmert Accepts Ceasefire

Flash traffic from AP. Ehud Olmert will accept the UN ceasefire proposal.

Olmert will recommend that his government approve the deal in its meeting on Sunday, said Gideon Meir, a senior official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

UPDATE: Greatly expanded article here.

Not Ready For Prime Time

I wrote these words earlier today: Naive amateurs wrapped in self-righteousness powered and funded by the far left. I was describing the victory of Ned Lamont and it's long term implications for the Democratic party. I wrote those words before I read about what Lamont's campaign manager had to say about the city of Waterbury, Connecticut after it voted heavily for Joe Lieberman. Campaign manager Tom Swan described Waterbury "as a place "where the forces of slime meet the forces of evil."

WATERBURY, Conn. - Democrat Ned Lamont's campaign manager said he would apologize to the mayor of Waterbury for describing the city that backed his opponent, Sen. Joe Lieberman, as a place "where the forces of slime meet the forces of evil."

Tom Swan said the comment made Tuesday, after the city voted heavily for Lieberman in the Democratic Senate primary, was in the context of a broader discussion of state politics in which former Mayor Philip A. Giordano was the "slime" and former Gov. John G. Rowland was the "evil."

Giordano is serving a prison sentence on federal child sex charges and Rowland, a Waterbury native, was forced to resign in 2004 and served a federal prison term for corruption.

Swan said that his statement was not meant to be reflective of the city and that he would send an apology Friday to Mayor Michael J. Jarjura.

Welcome to the real world, not that place of the extreme left where that kind of talk is routine. I'd say Lamont has lost Waterbury permanently at this point.

Chavez Suggests Castro Blow Out His Colon

Hugo Chavez must be trying to whack his competition for leading lefty in the Western hemisphere. Today he suggested that Fidel Castro would benefit from taking a dose of a homegrown concoction to clean out "all the digestive paths".

During a broadcast on Friday to inaugurate new health clinics partly staffed by Cuban doctors, Chavez described the recipe for Fidel's home-grown stomach cure-all known as "tsunami."

"Fidel has a formula for stomach problems and gases and heartburn — the tsunami," Chavez said. "Fifty percent oatmeal, 25 percent whole rye flour, and the other 25 percent whole wheat flour. You mix all that and it's a marvel because it's pure fiber and it cleans the stomach, all the digestive paths."

In previous broadcasts, Chavez said the 'tsunami' had cured his stomach problems while visiting a summit of the Mercosur trade bloc in Argentina.

Chavez, an increasingly influential force in Latin America's resurgent left, maintains an open confrontation with the United States while helping Cuba skirt an embargo imposed by Washington more than four decades ago.

I'm sure doctors everywhere would prescribe a massive blast of fiber to someone who had just undergone intestinal surgery. Not that we're disagreeing that Castro should take something. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have an even better recommendation, though.

This stuff should about do the trick.

I’m Sure There’s A Reason

Why someone would want over 1,000 prepaid cellular telephones with no chargers and be willing to pay twice as much as they cost at retail.

(TV5) — Around 1:00am August 11th three men purchased cell phones from the Wal-Mart store on M-81 near the corner of M-24 in Caro. Wal-Mart places a limit on the number of cell phones that can be purchased at once, that number is three. The three men allegedly bought 80 by purchasing them three at time so that an alert wouldn't be triggered by the cash register. They also paid cash.

An alert clerk grew suspicious and called Tuscola County central dispatch. The Caro Police Department sent a unit and stopped the rented van on M-81 just east of Caro. The suspects were headed towards Bad Axe on M-81 where there is another Super Wal-Mart.

The three men were described as being of Pakistani descent but live in Texas.   Police say the three, ages 19, 22, and 23 appear to be naturalized citizens. One man was driving while the other two were in the back opening the phone packages with box cutters throwing the phones in one box, batteries in another and the packaging and phone charger in another container. The suspects had 1000 other cell phones in the van. There was also a bag of receipts showing that someone was in Wisconsin the day before.

….

They also told officers they get stopped frequently and  say they buy the phones for $20 and sell them elsewhere for $38. They sell them without the packaging or charger.

I'm there is a reason. But I can't think of a legitimate peaceful one.

UN To Vote Today

The US and France have reached a compromise agreement on a ceasefire proposal. There will be a vote later today.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry said the resolution would give a U.N. force in Lebanon an enhanced mandate to help coordinate the eventual withdrawal of Israeli troops. But it would ultimately be deployed under Chapter 6 of the U.N. Charter — which Israel has previously opposed.

That decision was a key concession to Lebanon and Hezbollah. Israel wanted the force deployed under the Charter's Chapter 7, which would give the troops more robust rules of engagement.

An individual close to the Israeli government said there was a "good chance" it would accept the cease-fire proposal. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the government's high-stakes negotiations.

If confirmed, it would be a dramatic reversal of the position of the Israeli government, which ordered a massive ground invasion of southern Lebanon even as the U.N. deliberations went on.

"You'll find that the mandate for the force is very robust," Jones-Parry said.

Robust and France are not usually used in the same paragraph. Sometimes not in the whole book.

Tired Of Hearing The Same Noise

The Anchoress says it so well, rounds up all the links and provides the smackdown in perfect context.

Go read what she wrote.

Israel To Launch Ground Offensive

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has directed the IDF to implement the ground offensive that the war cabinet approved on Wednesday.

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided Friday to launch an expanded ground offensive in southern Lebanon after expressing dissatisfaction over an emerging cease-fire deal, government officials said.

Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz made the decision after meeting for four hours. Peretz instructed the military to launch the offensive, officials said.

Meanwhile, I am not seeing any reports on any progress at the UN at the moment. Between Lebanon rejecting the ceasefire plan earlier and this new announcement, this war appears to be nowhere near ending yet.

UPDATE: More at Ha'aretz.

First Step

Gerard Baker, writing in The Times of London, asks that blame be laid where it belongs.

THERE’S A familiar ritual each time an operation to thwart a putative terrorist incident dominates the news. After the public’s initial expressions of relief and shuddering contemplation of what might have been, a rising chorus of sceptics takes over, with a string of questions and hypotheses.

Was it really a serious terrorist plot, or only a bunch of misguided, alienated Muslim kids larking about with a chemistry set and a mobile phone? Sometimes, unfortunately, as with this summer’s ludicrously overplayed Miami “plot” to blow up buildings in Chicago, in which the plotters had got as far as purchasing some boots but not much else, overzealous authorities bring this sort of suspicion on themselves. But you can guarantee that every incident now, whatever the evidence, will be treated with such derisive doubt. If the police had got to the 9/11 hijackers or the 7/7 bombers in time, a sizeable chunk of respectable opinion would have dismissed them as idealistic young men with no real capacity or intent to cause harm.

The scepticism is then embellished by the conspiracy-as-diversion theory. How convenient, cluck the doubters, with rolled eyes and theatrical sarcasm, just as the Government’s got some new bonfire of civil liberties planned; or just as President Bush’s poll numbers are collapsing; or just as Israel is stepping up its ground attacks in southern Lebanon.

I've already noted those responses out there in the blogosphere. Recreational conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork in a flash whenever there is an arrest. It does not matter how much evidence there is that something major was broken up. Everything will be dismissed and some vague truthiness substituted for the facts. Baker is very blunt in his assessment:

And for this it just won’t do to claim it’s all about bad US foreign policy. It is repetitive but necessary to point out that we didn’t start this war when we invaded Iraq. The attacks on 9/11 were planned not only before we invaded, but during a time when the US was expending extraordinary effort to try to forge a lasting settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

And if our actions have radicalised the jihadists we should remember that they are animated at least as much by our ridding Afghanistan of their spiritual brethren, the Taleban, as they are by whatever crimes the US may have committed in Baghdad.

The same applies to Israel and Lebanon. Not only is the current war the direct result of Hezbollah’s aggression, its deeper causes lie in the continued determination of Israel’s enemies, increasingly emboldened by Tehran, to liquidate the Jewish state.

Few can look at events in Iraq or Lebanon today with optimism, but it would be dangerous folly to assume, as some do, that the West should retreat, beating its breast and promising never to offend again.

Events such as yesterday’s near-miss should remind us that September 11, 2001, gave birth to a radical and dangerous new world. It required the US — an imperfect country to be sure, but the only one with the power and the will to defend the basic freedoms we too easily take for granted — with its allies to remake the international system. It provided a terrifying harbinger of much larger atrocities to come, when terrorists and their state supporters get hold of weapons with which they can kill millions, not thousands. This new enemy is not like old enemies. It is fundamentalist and suicidal and apocalyptic. The old system, rooted in a liberal philosophy that relied on patient diplomacy and made a virtue of being slow to respond to attacks, was unequal to this new challenge. The new system required rapid action to open up the Middle East, the festering root of all these threats to modernity.

The first step is to stop blaming ourselves. Read the whole thing, it's quite good.

How To Become President Of France

Have a bunch of magazines print pictures of you wearing a bikini. It's that easy. Or at least it won't hurt the chances of Segolene Royal, 53, the French Socialist who is in the running for the job. Royal is doing the requisite complaining about the pictures, but the protests appear to be purely for window dressing. Mind you, it doesn't hurt that she actually looks pretty darn good in it, too. She is, after all, 53 and the mother of four.

This week's edition of celebrity magazine "Closer" included a cover picture of Royal on holiday in bathing suit, cap and sunglasses as part of a survey of "50 stars at the beach."

Its rival VSD followed up with a similar photo of Royal juxtaposed with a picture of Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative she may well face in next year's presidential election, jogging on the beach over the headline: "Duel in the sun."

The photos have sparked widespread radio and newspaper comment including a long article in the ultra-serious Le Monde.

Both politicians are shrewd at using the media to push their image as modern politicians ready to breathe life into France's hidebound political system and both have faced accusations they place style and image over substance.

That has played into the agenda of a celebrity press devoted to the doings of actors, singers and other personalities referred to in France as "les people."

"Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy are the 'people' of the vacation season," VSD deputy editor Marc Dolisi wrote in an editorial. "The public watches their smallest actions and gestures because they have used their private lives as a political weapon with such mastery."

The comment is undoubtedly true but it may also have been aimed at warding off complaints about intrusion.

The French media has traditionally been very discreet about covering politicians' private lives, steering clear of sensitive issues and sparing them the relentless attention faced by their counterparts in countries like Britain.

As a public service, we went through the internet searching for this fabled photo, just so our faithful readers wouldn't have to risk carpal tunnel syndrome:

We also want to go on the record with one, small request. Please stay away from the beach, Hillary. Please. Your bust was bad enough.

UPDATE: April 22, 2007. This post has suddenly become red hot on the search engines according to the logs. Hey, take a look around the blog if you found it because of this picture!

Mexican Election Fraud

Oh, there's fraud alright, it is being attempted by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his supporters. Mark in Mexico has a handy little primer into the attempted fraud, Mexican election law and stupid political tricks that AMLO supporters are trying to pull off. They are fully aware that Mexican election law does not allow for what they are demanding, but they are trying to force a court to make in illegal ruling to support an illegal protest. Destroy Mexico, it's economy and it's laws so that AMLO can be president.

Here is an example that may help you. Let's take a civil court case in a USA court. The jury renders its verdict. Neither side in the case likes the verdict. So both the plantiffs and the defendants in the case agree that they want a new trial. They tell the judge, "We've agreed that we want a new trial because we didn't like the results of the last one." What would the judge say? "Get lost, and quickly," is what he would say.

Let's say that the election magistrates had arbitrarily ruled for a 100% recount. All it would take would be for any Mexican citizen, or, more likely the PRI, to challenge that ruling and the election magistrates would be forced under the law to vacate their own decision. No magistrate or group of magistrates, in Mexico or the USA or anywhere else for that matter, are going to put themselves in such a position.

Mexican election law is also designed to avoid the ballot containers - the paquetes - from ever being assembled in one place at the same time. They are spread out all over the country. This is to preclude the possibility of the type of massive fraud that AMLO is claiming occurred.

Here is some of the silliness being perpetrated by AMLO's recount watchers. When the very first paquete was opened and recounted yesterday and it was found that Calderon had gained a vote, a PRD spokesman immediately went before the press to claim that this one vote error demonstrated that a 100% recount was necessary.

In a district up north somewhere yesterday, all the players arrived at the warehouse where the paquetes were stored. The PRD representative immediately began crying foul because the warehouse had two doors, both sealed, but the seal on one door had been signed by the the District Committee president and vice president, while the seal on the other door had been signed by those two as well as each of the party representatives who were present when the seals were placed. "Fraud," cried the PRD rep.

The presiding magistrate listened to this folly, then said that, since neither seal had been broken and neither door had been opened, the objection was denied. You don't overturn an election because of alleged missing signatures that may or may not have been required on a seal that obviously hasn't been broken.

These kinds of stupid, baseless charges are all that fuels the leftist loser AMLO. That and money from somewhere. I'd still like to know who is paying for all those protesters. Who, by the way, today blocked the tax office.

Using Terrorism As A Political Tool

The Opinion Journal points out the egregious use of word of terrorism arrests as political fodder. This abusive practice is very much in evidence since the announcement of the thwarted plot to bomb airplanes. The American public must demand that politicians stop using terrorism for cheap political gain.

So, let's all just tell Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy to shut up already.

"This wasn't supposed to happen today," a U.S. official told the Washington Post of the arrests and terror alert. "It was supposed to happen several days from now. We hear the British lost track of one or two guys. They had to move." Meanwhile, British antiterrorism chief Peter Clarke said at a news conference that the plot was foiled because "a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."

Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.

And almost on political cue yesterday, Members of the Congressional Democratic leadership were using the occasion to suggest that the U.S. is actually more vulnerable today despite this antiterror success. Harry Reid, who's bidding to run the Senate as Majority Leader, saw it as one more opportunity to insist that "the Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists."

Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win." Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. Did the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot? And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?

Surveillance? Hmmm. Democrats and their media allies screamed bloody murder last year when it was leaked that the government was monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA wasn't designed for, nor does it forbid, the timely exploitation of what are often anonymous phone numbers, and the calls monitored had at least one overseas connection. But Mr. Reid labeled such surveillance "illegal" and an "NSA domestic spying program." Other Democrats are still saying they will censure, or even impeach, Mr. Bush over the FISA program if they win control of Congress.

There is a large scale effort on the part of the left blogosphere right now to charge that Bush and Cheney engineered everything about yesterday's arrests because Ned Lamont won in Connecticut. No, really, there is. Because it's all about Ned. Talk about a single issue blindness. The comments of Reid and Kennedy also show a bizarre inability to see the forest because of all the trees in the way. They see the arrests as a single data point. They see Iraq as another. Iran, still another. Lebanon yet another. All separate, all unique, discreet events with no commonality. Except that they desperately want to blame Bush for all of it, of course.

But there are common links, there are ties with everything that is happening in this ongoing war (hint: It is not Bush, either. Nor is it America). The battlefronts are interconnected. We need to all realize that here in the West or it will be a long war indeed.

Update On Cell Phone Arrests

More news on the two men arrested in Ohio with prepaid cell phones, cash and flight information.

Twenty-year olds Ali Howssaiky and Osama Abulhassan are facing charges of money laundering to aid terrorism. This comes after a traffic stop Tuesday led police to thousands of dollars in cash, several disposable cell phones and instructions of how to obtain private flight information. Police also found a list of flight passengers in the car.

"It also had information about airport checkpoints, and what would be accomplished there, so this is a little bit unusual," Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks says.

Sheriff Mincks also says the disposable cell phones are especially important, because it appears their final destination was supposed to be overseas.

"They are digital and can be used to detonate car bombs," he says.

Residents say it is scary to think of terrorism in the Mid-Ohio Valley.

"Being in our area, it makes me uncomfortable, but surprised is something no one should be," Marietta resident Rose Criss says.

Sheriff Mincks says they might have picked Marietta because of the small town atmosphere, but that probably worked to their disadvantage when it came to getting caught.

Even in small towns, people need to remain alert. This is a real war and it reaches everywhere.

Lebanon Balking?

The Jerusalem Post reports that Lebanon is balking at the UN resolution currently circulating. They appear to be refusing to consider any ceasefire that does not impose an immediate ceasefire.

A new obstacle arose over the latest UN draft proposal to stop the fighting between Israel and Hizbullah on Thursday night, when Lebanon refused to allow the French to enforce its mandate as allowed by the UN's chapter VII regulations.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said in an interview with Al-Jazeera news station that he was opposed to the draft proposal because it did not call for an immediate cease-fire.

"We received France's draft proposal and the United States' draft proposal," he said, "and neither of the two drafts addressed [the issue of] an immediate cease-fire. This is unacceptable to us."

Israel Radio reported that attempts were being made to convince Lebanon to agree to the proposal.

Among the ideas being discussed was a "substantially beefed up UNIFIL" force to be made up of German, Italian, Spanish and Australian troops that would move south to the border with the Lebanese Army and deploy where the IDF moves out. Another idea was for a French force to accompany the Lebanese Army.

Kadima MK Otniel Schneller met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Thursday and quoted him as saying that "a new proposal is being drafted, which has positive significance that may bring the war to an end. But if the draft is not accepted, there is the Cabinet decision."

If both Lebanon and Israel agree to the proposal, it is expected to brought before the UN Security Council for ratification within 24 hours.

US State Department envoy David Welch held meetings with Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni Thursday night to coordinate positions on the new cease-fire proposal. Welch arrived in Jerusalem from Beirut, where he held talks with Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.

If no acceptable resolution can be worked out, both the US and France appear to be willing to try circulating separate and competing drafts. The diplomatic mess is not improving at the moment.